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How Many Votes Does It Take to Get an Oscar Nomination in 2022?

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A year ago, it took 457 votes to receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination. This year, it’ll take 863. But that doesn’t mean it has become harder.
A year ago, it took 457 votes to receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination. This year, it’ll take 863. But that doesn’t mean that getting into the Academy Awards’ top category has become harder. In fact, it’s easier to land that nomination this year, with a guaranteed 10 nominees for the first time since 2011. In other categories, where nomination voting is restricted to specific branches of the Academy, the magic number to secure Oscar nominations ranges from a low of 29 for Best Costume Design to a high of 223 in the acting categories. But when we say it takes 863 votes for a Best Picture nomination, we’re talking about first-place votes. Under the Oscars preferential or ranked-choice system, a voter typically lists his or her top-five choices in order of preference. After those first-place votes are added up, the lowest-ranking films are eliminated from contention, and their ballots are redistributed to the film ranked second on each ballot. (If the second choice has also been eliminated, or if it’s already hit the magic number and secured a nomination, the vote goes to the next highest contender on the ballot.) The redistribution continues until the field is narrowed to the final five nominees, or the final 10 for Best Picture. To figure out the magic number for each category, you take the number of potential voters in that category and divide by the number of nominees, plus one. (In almost every case, that means 5+1=6.) You round the result up to the next highest number, and that gives you a “magic number” that ensures a film or achievement will be in the top five. Here’s the breakdown of what it’ll take to land a nomination in each category when voting begins on Jan.27. Note: as the count goes on, the magic number can decrease. Best Picture If all 9,487 eligible voters cast ballots in this category, it would take 863 No.1 votes to guarantee a nomination. But remember: Even if a film doesn’t have that many first-place votes in the initial count, it will likely have many rounds to pick up additional votes as other films are eliminated. This is the big change from last year. Under the system designed to produce a variable number of Best Picture nominees, voting stopped after a single round of redistribution, and everything with more than 5% of the vote was a nominee. The magic number was much lower under that system, but films had very limited opportunities to get to that number; this year, the count will likely last much longer, giving contenders many more chances to move into the Top 10. Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress If every one of the 1,336 voters in the Academy’s largest branch casts a ballot, it’ll take 223 votes to land a nomination in each of the Oscars’ four acting categories.

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